Pros

Cons

Bulky.
App selection remains a concern.

Bottom Line

Samsung brings built-in GPS, an always-on display, military grade-durability, and more to its attractive new Gear S3 smartwatch.

21 Dec 2016

The Samsung Gear S3 ($349.99) is the most aggressively featured smartwatch you can buy for Android phones. It makes calls, plays music, runs apps, tracks steps, shows widgets, sends texts, and lets you pay with your credit card. It's also waterproof and has a far better interface than Android Wear smartwatches. But it's big, clunky, and expensive, and Samsung itself offers a better solution in the Gear S2 Classic.

Physical Features and Calling

The Gear S3 comes in various models. There's the Classic, with a smooth bezel in silver or rose, and the Frontier, with a more rugged look. There's also an LTE-compatible version of the Frontier sold by AT&T and T-Mobile, which are the only models that can support voice calls. Each one costs $349; AT&T charges $10 per month for smartwatch service, and T-Mobile charges $5. We tested both carrier versions of the LTE Frontier, which connect to LTE on Bands 2 and 5, which are shorter-range than T-Mobile's Band 12 and AT&T's Band 17.

The S3 Frontier weighs 2.2 ounces and measures 1.81 by 1.93 by 0.51 inches (HWD). Its body is broadly similar to the S2 Classic's, just larger, thicker, and heavier. It has a rotating bezel (which is still the best way any smartwatch has to select from a menu of options), two buttons, and a 1.3-inch, 360-by-260, 278ppi circular AMOLED touch screen. There's an always-on option buried within settings, but I couldn't make it work; no matter what I set it to, the screen would time out and wait until I moved or touched it to light up again. You can't see the microphone and speakers, but they're there, and they're surprisingly powerful. There's a heart-rate monitor on the underside, and Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, LTE, and GPS within.

The Gear series works with Android phones. While many features work independently, especially on the LTE-capable models, you need the Samsung Gear helper app to install new apps and watch faces, and that isn't available for iOS.

This is a taste thing, I admit, but I'm just going to say: I dislike the Gear S3's design. I don't like how gigantic, heavy, and bulky it is. I don't like the sticky "athletic" silicone band, which is fortunately replaceable with any 22mm band. Ultimately, I just feel that a smartwatch shouldn't dominate your wrist like the Death Star. I know there are some people who like very large watches, but I'm not one of them. The Gear S2 Classic is far more manageable.

Samsung says you can "go for days on a single charge," but that depends on how heavily you use the watch. I got about a day and a half of battery life with heavy use, or three days if I left it alone, all with the "always-on" screen option turned off. Still, that's better than the Apple Watch, which lasts about a day. You charge it using the included cradle, pictured below.

The Gear S3s we tested have SIM cards and connect to LTE networks. For an LTE watch to work properly in your lifestyle, you need to be using AT&T's NumberSync function or T-Mobile's Digits to sync with your main number. (I tried both, they work.) You don't want your smartwatch to have its own phone number, after all.

The watch doesn't have a headphone jack, although it connects to wireless headphones. Still, you'll likely make most of your calls using the built-in speaker. I found it much more convenient for short calls than having to fumble for my phone or connect a headset. Call quality is surprisingly clear using HD voice on the AT&T and T-Mobile networks.

Texting is less differentiated from the Gear S2 and other smartwatches, although it works when you're not near your phone, which is a big difference from non-LTE units. Fortunately, you can still reply using preloaded quick responses, which you can edit in the Gear app. You can also reply by recording short voice messages and sending them.

Operating System and Apps

The S3 runs Samsung's Tizen operating system, which has always had a clearer UI than Android Wear. It defaults to a watch face, of course. Turn the bezel left for notifications. Turn it right for customizable widgets. Those can include a calendar, contacts, music player, or various lenses on your health information. Press the bottom button for a radial menu of all the apps on the watch; hold the top button for Samsung Pay. That's similar in a lot of ways to the Apple Watch's usability, although I wish I could set the bezel to rotate to my most-used apps, as opposed to the subset of apps that have available widgets. The S3 has 4GB of storage, of which about 3GB is free for add-on apps, music, and images.

The Gear's app store has developed slowly with time. Most of the good apps aren't free; they cost $1-5. The most surprising plus is the long list of games, with lots of rip-offs of popular brands like Fruit Ninja, Crossy Road, and Galaxian, all playable on the watch. Official apps for popular social networks such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat are missing, as are good information and news apps beyond CNN, ESPN, and Flipboard, although there are low-quality clone apps available for social network management.

If you get tired of the physical UI, you can use S Voice to command the watch. It's supposed to launch when you say "OK Gear," but I found that it often triggers unexpectedly and then starts writing down entire random conversations you have, which is very disconcerting. Otherwise, it lets you set timers and alarms, take notes, and make calls and texts in a fully hands-free mode.

Fitness Features

With its rugged, IP68 waterproof body, the Gear S3 is selling itself as a fitness tracker, too. (Samsung says it's dunkable, but not to take it swimming.) It's accurate enough for both step counts and elevation. Compared with a Fitbit Charge 2, I saw 887 steps on the Gear S3 where the Fitbit counted 884. The watch translates changes in elevation into stairs climbed, but unfortunately, it can't tell when you're on an escalator. (That's an easy way to make your daily stair quota, though!)

You interact with your fitness data through Samsung's S Health app, which is preloaded on Samsung phones and downloadable for other Android devices. It tracks a bunch of metrics, including steps, sleep, heart rate, water consumption, where and how much you've run or walked, weight goals, and more. You can add additional plug-ins to sync with Noom, Pear, Withings, or Cigna. S Health, unfortunately, doesn't sync with other popular third-party fitness apps like MyFitnessPal, MapMyRun, Strava, or Runtastic. This could be a big minus if you're already part of one of those huge fitness communities.

Samsung Pay

Samsung Pay is one of the Gear S3's flagship features, and one of its big differences from the Gear S2. It just has one really pesky, potentially deal-breaking usability problem.

Samsung Pay works in tandem with the Gear app; you set up your credit card in the app, and then you can pay by pressing your watch against a store's credit card reader. Because the watch uses both NFC and magnetic stripe technology, it works with traditional credit card readers. It should be effortless.

But if you want to use the Gear S3 with Samsung Pay, you have to lock your watch with a PIN. It's okay to have to tap out a little PIN on your watch when you want to pay for things. You expect that. The problem is that now the PIN is on all the time. So every time you want to check your watch beyond looking at the time—every time you want to use a smart function—you end up having to tap the PIN on the tricky little screen. Because of this I gave up using Samsung Pay after a day.

Conclusions

If we were just tallying features, the Samsung Gear S3 would get a higher rating than you see at the top of the page. But our view on smartwatches is that smaller, simpler, and clearer is better. Pebble's watches fit that bill, but Pebble is now gone. The Gear S3 is huge, expensive, and complex—it's the Microsoft Office of smartwatches.

The difference between the Gear S3 and the LTE-enabled version of the Gear S2 Classic is largely cosmetic. Mostly, by choosing the Gear S2, you lose the altimeter, the barometer, and the ability to use Samsung Pay with non-NFC based credit card machines. In exchange, you save $100 and don't have to wear a giant honking watch on your wrist. In its non-LTE form, you lose calling and GPS as well, but being able to yell into your wrist like Dick Tracy is likely more of a gimmick than an actual frequently used feature.

Apple users, meanwhile, should go with the Apple Watch Series 1 or Series 2. And those focused on fitness should choose the Fitbit Charge 2 or even Samsung's own Gear Fit2. The Gear S3 is a lot of smartwatch—but it values features above functionality.

About the Author

PCMag.com's lead mobile analyst, Sascha Segan, has reviewed hundreds of smartphones, tablets and other gadgets in more than 9 years with PCMag. He's the head of our Fastest Mobile Networks project, one of the hosts of the daily PCMag Live Web show and speaks frequently in mass media on cell-phone-related issues. His commentary has appeared on ABC, the BBC, the CBC, CNBC, CNN, Fox News, and in newspapers from San Antonio, Texas to Edmonton, Alberta.

Segan is also a multiple award-winning travel writer, having contributed to the Frommer's series of travel guides and Web sites for more than a decade. Other than his home town of New York, his favorite ... See Full Bio